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terça-feira, 21 de janeiro de 2014

AMERICAN LITERATURE

By Kathryn VanSpanckeren

American indians 1916

PART III

THE AMERICAN ENLIGHTENMENT
The 18th-century American Enlightenment was a movement marked by an emphasis on
rationality rather than tradition, scientific inquiry instead of unquestioning
religious dogma, and representative government in place of monarchy.
Enlightenment thinkers and writers were devoted to the ideals of justice,
liberty, and equality as the natural rights of man.

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
Benjamin Franklin, whom the Scottish philosopher David Hume called Americas
"first great man of letters," embodied the Enlightenment ideal of
humane rationality. Practical yet idealistic, hard-working and enormously successful,
Franklin recorded his early life in his famous Autobiography. Writer, printer,
publisher, scientist, philanthropist, and diplomat, he was the most famous and
respected private figure of his time. He was the first great self-made man in
America, a poor democrat born in an aristocratic age that his fine example
helped to liberalize.
Franklin was a second-generation immigrant. His Puritan father, a chandler
(candle-maker), came to Boston, Massachusetts, from England in 1683. In many
ways Franklins life illustrates the impact of the Enlightenment on a gifted
individual. Self- educated but well-read in John Locke, Lord Shaftesbury,
Joseph Addison, and other Enlightenment writers, Franklin learned from them to
apply reason to his own life and to break with tradition in particular the
old-fashioned Puritan tradition when it threatened to smother his ideals.
While a youth, Franklin taught himself languages, read widely, and practiced
writing for the public. When he moved from Boston to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
Franklin already had the kind of education associated with the upper classes.
He also had the Puritan capacity for hard, careful work, constant self-
scrutiny, and the desire to better himself. These qualities steadily propelled
him to wealth, respectability, and honor. Never selfish, Franklin tried to help
other ordinary people become successful by sharing his insights and initiating
a characteristically American genre the self-help book.
Franklins Poor Richards Almanack, begun in 1732 and published for many years,
made Franklin prosperous and well-known throughout the colonies. In this annual
book of useful encouragement, advice, and factual information, amusing
characters such as old Father Abraham and Poor Richard exhort the reader in
pithy, memorable sayings. In "The Way to Wealth," which originally
appeared in the Almanack, Father Abraham, "a plain clean old Man, with
white Locks," quotes Poor Richard at length. "A Word to the Wise is
enough," he says. "God helps them that help themselves."
"Early to Bed, and early to rise, makes a Man healthy, wealthy, and
wise." Poor Richard is a psychologist ("Industry pays Debts, while
Despair encreaseth them"), and he always counsels hard work
("Diligence is the Mother of Good Luck"). Do not be lazy, he advises,
for "One To-day is worth two tomorrow." Sometimes he creates
anecdotes to illustrate his points: "A little Neglect may breed great
Mischief....For want of a Nail the Shoe was lost; for want of a Shoe the Horse
was lost; and for want of a Horse the Rider was lost, being overtaken and slain
by the Enemy, all for want of Care about a Horse-shoe Nail." Franklin was
a genius at compressing a moral point: "What maintains one Vice, would
bring up two Children." "A small leak will sink a great Ship."
"Fools make Feasts, and wise Men eat them." Franklin’s Autobiography is, in part, another self-help book. Written to advise his son, it covers
only the early years. The most famous section describes his scientific scheme
of self- improvement. Franklin lists 13 virtues: temperance, silence, order,
resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness,
tranquility, chastity, and humility. He elaborates on each with a maxim; for
example, the temperance maxim is "Eat not to Dullness. Drink not to
Elevation." A pragmatic scientist, Franklin put the idea of perfectibility
to the test, using himself as the experimental subject.
To establish good habits, Franklin invented a reusable calendrical record book
in which he worked on one virtue each week, recording each lapse with a black
spot. His theory prefigures psychological behaviorism, while his systematic
method of notation anticipates modern behavior modification. The project of
self-improvement blends the Enlightenment belief in perfectibility with the
Puritan habit of moral self-scrutiny.
Franklin saw early that writing could best advance his ideas, and he therefore
deliberately perfected his supple prose style, not as an end in itself but as a
tool. "Write with the learned. Pronounce with the vulgar," he
advised. A scientist, he followed the Royal (scientific) Societys 1667 advice
to use "a close, naked, natural way of speaking; positive expressions,
clear senses, a native easiness, bringing all things as near the mathematical
plainness as they can."
Despite his prosperity and fame, Franklin never lost his democratic
sensibility, and he was an important figure at the 1787 convention at which the
U.S. Constitution was drafted. In his later years, he was president of an
antislavery association. One of his last efforts was to promote universal
public education.

Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur (1735-1813)
Another Enlightenment figure is Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, whose Letters
from an American Farmer (1782) gave Europeans a glowing idea of opportunities
for peace, wealth, and pride in America. Neither an American nor a farmer, but
a French aristocrat who owned a plantation outside New York City before the
Revolution, Crèvecoeur enthusiastically praised the colonies for their
industry, tolerance, and growing prosperity in 12 letters that depict America
as an agrarian paradise a vision that would inspire Thomas Jefferson, Ralph
Waldo Emerson, and many other writers up to the present.
Crèvecoeur was the earliest European to develop a considered view of America
and the new American character. The first to exploit the "melting
pot" image of America, in a famous passage he asks:
What then is the American, this new man? He is either a European, or the
descendant of a European, hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will
find in no other country. I could point out to you a family whose grandfather
was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and
whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations....Here individuals
of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity
will one day cause changes in the world.

THE POLITICAL PAMPHLET: Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
The passion of Revolutionary literature is found in pamphlets, the most popular
form of political literature of the day. Over 2,000 pamphlets were published
during the Revolution. The pamphlets thrilled patriots and threatened
loyalists; they filled the role of drama, as they were often read aloud in
public to excite audiences. American soldiers read them aloud in their camps;
British Loyalists threw them into public bonfires.
Thomas Paines pamphlet Common Sense sold over 100,000 copies in the first three
months of its publication. It is still rousing today. "The cause of
America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind," Paine wrote,
voicing the idea of American exceptionalism still strong in the United States
that in some fundamental sense, since America is a democratic experiment and a
country theoretically open to all immigrants, the fate of America foreshadows
the fate of humanity at large.
Political writings in a democracy had to be clear to appeal to the voters. And
to have informed voters, universal education was promoted by many of the
founding fathers. One indication of the vigorous, if simple, literary life was
the proliferation of newspapers. More newspapers were read in America during
the Revolution than anywhere else in the world. Immigration also mandated a
simple style. Clarity was vital to a newcomer, for whom English might be a
second language. Thomas Jeffersons original draft of the Declaration of
Independence is clear and logical, but his committees modifications made it
even simpler. The Federalist Papers, written in support of the Constitution,
are also lucid, logical arguments, suitable for debate in a democratic nation.

NEOCLASSISM: EPIC, MOCK EPIC, AND SATIRE
Unfortunately, "literary" writing was not as simple and direct as
political writing. When trying to write poetry, most educated authors stumbled
into the pitfall of elegant neoclassicism. The epic, in particular, exercised a
fatal attraction. American literary patriots felt sure that the great American
Revolution naturally would find expression in the epic a long, dramatic
narrative poem in elevated language, celebrating the feats of a legendary hero.
Many writers tried but none succeeded. Timothy Dwight (1752- 1817), one of the
group of writers known as the Hartford Wits, is an example. Dwight, who
eventually became the president of Yale University, based his epic, The
Conquest of Canaan (1785), on the Biblical story of Joshuas struggle to enter
the Promised Land. Dwight cast General Washington, commander of the American
army and later the first president of the United States, as Joshua in his allegory
and borrowed the couplet form that Alexander Pope used to translate Homer.
Dwights epic was as boring as it was ambitious. English critics demolished it;
even Dwights friends, such as John Trumbull (1750-1831), remained
unenthusiastic. So much thunder and lightning raged in the melodramatic battle
scenes that Trumbull proposed that the epic be provided with lightning rods.
Not surprisingly, satirical poetry fared much better than serious verse. The
mock epic genre encouraged American poets to use their natural voices and did
not lure them into a bog of pretentious and predictable patriotic sentiments
and faceless conventional poetic epithets out of the Greek poet Homer and the
Roman poet Virgil by way of the English poets.
In mock epics like John Trumbulls good-humored MFingal (1776-82), stylized
emotions and conventional turns of phrase are ammunition for good satire, and
the bombastic oratory of the revolution is itself ridiculed. Modeled on the
British poet Samuel Butlers Hudibras, the mock epic derides a Tory, MFingal. It
is often pithy, as when noting of condemned criminals facing hanging:

No man eer felt the halter draw
With good opinion of the law.

MFingal went into over 30
editions, was reprinted for a half- century, and was appreciated in England as
well as America. Satire appealed to Revolutionary audiences partly because it
contained social comment and criticism, and political topics and social
problems were the main subjects of the day. The first American comedy to be
performed, The Contrast (produced 1787) by Royall Tyler (1757-1826), humorously
contrasts Colonel Manly, an American officer, with Dimple, who imitates English
fashions. Naturally, Dimple is made to look ridiculous. The play introduces the
first Yankee character, Jonathan.
Another satirical work, the novel Modern Chivalry, published by Hugh Henry
Brackenridge in installments from 1792 to 1815, memorably lampoons the excesses
of the age. Brackenridge (1748- 1816), a Scottish immigrant raised on the
American frontier, based his huge, picaresque novel on Don Quixote; it
describes the misadventures of Captain Farrago and his stupid, brutal, yet
appealingly human, servant Teague ORegan.

POET OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION: Philip Freneau (1752-1832)
One poet, Philip Freneau, incorporated the new stirrings of European
Romanticism and escaped the imitativeness and vague universality of the
Hartford Wits. The key to both his success and his failure was his passionately
democratic spirit combined with an inflexible temper.
The Hartford Wits, all of them undoubted patriots, reflected the general
cultural conservatism of the educated classes. Freneau set himself against this
holdover of old Tory attitudes, complaining of "the writings of an
aristocratic, speculating faction at Hartford, in favor of monarchy and titular
distinctions." Although Freneau received a fine education and was as well
acquainted with the classics as any Hartford Wit, he embraced liberal and
democratic causes.
From a Huguenot (radical French Protestant) background, Freneau fought as a
militiaman during the Revolutionary War. In 1780, he was captured and
imprisoned in two British ships, where he almost died before his family managed
to get him released. His poem "The British Prison Ship" is a bitter
condemnation of the cruelties of the British, who wished "to stain the
world with gore." This piece and other revolutionary works, including
"Eutaw Springs," "American Liberty," "A Political
Litany," "A Midnight Consultation," and "George the Thirds
Soliloquy," brought him fame as the "Poet of the American
Revolution."
Freneau edited a number of journals during his life, always mindful of the
great cause of democracy. When Thomas Jefferson helped him establish the
militant, anti-Federalist National Gazette in 1791, Freneau became the first
powerful, crusading newspaper editor in America, and the literary predecessor
of William Cullen Bryant, William Lloyd Garrison, and H.L. Mencken.
As a poet and editor, Freneau adhered to his democratic ideals. His popular
poems, published in newspapers for the average reader, regularly celebrated
American subjects. "The Virtue of Tobacco" concerns the indigenous
plant, a mainstay of the southern economy, while "The Jug of Rum"
celebrates the alcoholic drink of the West Indies, a crucial commodity of early
American trade and a major New World export. Common American characters lived
in "The Pilot of Hatteras," as well as in poems about quack doctors
and bombastic evangelists.
Freneau commanded a natural and colloquial style appropriate to a genuine
democracy, but he could also rise to refined neoclassic lyricism in
often-anthologized works such as "The Wild Honeysuckle" (1786), which
evokes a sweet-smelling native shrub. Not until the "American
Renaissance" that began in the 1820s would American poetry surpass the
heights that Freneau had scaled 40 years earlier.
Additional groundwork for later literary achievement was laid during the early
years. Nationalism inspired publications in many fields, leading to a new
appreciation of things American. Noah Webster (1758-1843) devised an American
Dictionary, as well as an important reader and speller for the schools. His
Spelling Book sold more than 100 million copies over the years. Updated
Websters dictionaries are still standard today. The American Geography, by
Jedidiah Morse, another landmark reference work, promoted knowledge of the vast
and expanding American land itself. Some of the most interesting if nonliterary
writings of the period are the journals of frontiersmen and explorers such as Meriwether
Lewis (1774-1809) and Zebulon Pike (1779-1813), who wrote accounts of
expeditions across the Louisiana Territory, the vast portion of the North
American continent that Thomas Jefferson purchased from Napoleon in 1803.

WRITERS OF FICTION
The first important fiction writers widely recognized today, Charles Brockden
Brown, Washington Irving, and James Fenimore Cooper, used American subjects,
historical perspectives, themes of change, and nostalgic tones. They wrote in
many prose genres, initiated new forms, and found new ways to make a living
through literature. With them, American literature began to be read and
appreciated in the United States and abroad.

Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810)
Already mentioned as the first professional American writer, Charles Brockden
Brown was inspired by the English writers Mrs. Radcliffe and English William
Godwin. (Radcliffe was known for her terrifying Gothic novels; a novelist and
social reformer, Godwin was the father of Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein
and married English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.)
Driven by poverty, Brown hastily penned four haunting novels in two years:
Wieland (1798), Arthur Mervyn (1799), Ormond (1799), and Edgar Huntley (1799).
In them, he developed the genre of American Gothic. The Gothic novel was a
popular genre of the day featuring exotic and wild settings, disturbing
psychological depth, and much suspense. Trappings included ruined castles or
abbeys, ghosts, mysterious secrets, threatening figures, and solitary maidens
who survive by their wits and spiritual strength. At their best, such novels
offer tremendous suspense and hints of magic, along with profound explorations
of the human soul in extremity. Critics suggest that Browns Gothic sensibility
expresses deep anxieties about the inadequate social institutions of the new
nation.
Brown used distinctively American settings. A man of ideas, he dramatized
scientific theories, developed a personal theory of fiction, and championed
high literary standards despite personal poverty. Though flawed, his works are
darkly powerful. Increasingly, he is seen as the precursor of romantic writers
like Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. He expresses
subconscious fears that the outwardly optimistic Enlightenment period drove
underground.

Washington Irving (1789-1859)
The youngest of 11 children born to a well-to-do New York merchant family,
Washington Irving became a cultural and diplomatic ambassador to Europe, like
Benjamin Franklin and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Despite his talent, he probably
would not have become a full-time professional writer, given the lack of
financial rewards, if a series of fortuitous incidents had not thrust writing
as a profession upon him. Through friends, he was able to publish his Sketch Book
(1819-1820) simultaneously in England and America, obtaining copyrights and
payment in both countries.
The Sketch Book of Geoffrye Crayon (Irvings pseudonym) contains his two best
remembered stories, "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy
Hollow." "Sketch" aptly describes Irvings delicate, elegant, yet
seemingly casual style, and "crayon" suggests his ability as a
colorist or creator of rich, nuanced tones and emotional effects. In the Sketch
Book, Irving transforms the Catskill Mountains along the Hudson River north of
New York City into a fabulous, magical region.
American readers gratefully accepted Irving imagined "history" of the
Catskills, despite the fact (unknown to them) that he had adapted his stories
from a German source. Irving gave America something it badly needed in the
brash, materialistic early years: an imaginative way of relating to the new
land.
No writer was as successful as Irving at humanizing the land, endowing it with
a name and a face and a set of legends. The story of "Rip Van
Winkle," who slept for 20 years, waking to find the colonies had become
independent, eventually became folklore. It was adapted for the stage, went
into the oral tradition, and was gradually accepted as authentic American
legend by generations of Americans.
Irving discovered and helped satisfy the raw new nations sense of history. His
numerous works may be seen as his devoted attempts to build the new nations
soul by recreating history and giving it living, breathing, imaginative life.
For subjects, he chose the most dramatic aspects of American history: the
discovery of the New World, the first president and national hero, and the
westward exploration. His earliest work was a sparkling, satirical History of
New York (1809) under the Dutch, ostensibly written by Diedrich Knickerbocker
(hence the name of Irvings friends and New York writers of the day, the
"Knickerbocker School").

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)
James Fenimore Cooper, like Irving, evoked a sense of the past and gave it a
local habitation and a name. In Cooper, though, one finds the powerful myth of
a golden age and the poignance of its loss. While Irving and other American
writers before and after him scoured Europe in search of its legends, castles,
and great themes, Cooper grasped the essential myth of America: that it was
timeless, like the wilderness. American history was a trespass on the eternal;
European history in America was a reenactment of the fall in the Garden of
Eden. The cyclical realm of nature was glimpsed only in the act of destroying
it: The wilderness disappeared in front of American eyes, vanishing before the
oncoming pioneers like a mirage. This is Coopers basic tragic vision of the
ironic destruction of the wilderness, the new Eden that had attracted the
colonists in the first place.
Personal experience enabled Cooper to write vividly of the transformation of
the wilderness and of other subjects such as the sea and the clash of peoples
from d

AMERICAN
LITERATURE
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A fly by imagination

And life passes so quickly...

Because literature is part of our history.

The main idea of this Blog is spread the habit of reading. Literature is part of our lives. When enter in the Literature world, we read better and we improve our though and imagination.I want, with this, divide a little of my dreams. Is to give opportunity to people read and know about works produced by ancient and contemporary writers, and mainly, myself to be insert in this wonderful world of the Letters.